Rain

March 16, 2015
Environmental journalist Barnett (Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis) examines how dramatic flood and relentless drought have made their mark on human lives. She packs her persuasive volume with plenty of solid history, but her style in this exploration leans much more toward the lyrical in understanding how rain—whether dreary, cleansing, or unrelentingly wet—has become a core anchor of the human condition. Barnett draws inspiration from a wide range of sources: the music of Seattle’s grunge bands; the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Emily Dickinson; the drive to predict and control that spurred the actions of early weather trackers, rainmaking charlatans, and government cloud-seeders; the urge to blame that brought women to their deaths in the witch trials of Europe; the creative ambition displayed by the inventor of the Macintosh coat; and the scent-making magic behind monsoon-ravaged India’s earthy petrichor attars or America’s obsession with the synthetic smell of ”rain-themed products.” There are also some odder quirks in the account, particularly her discussion of bizarre phenomena such as rains of frogs and a bit of ill-placed Indian travelogue at the end. Nevertheless, Barnett beautifully evokes universal themes of connecting cycles of water, air, wind, and earth to humankind across time and culture, leaving readers contemplating their deeper ties with the natural world.

February 15, 2015
An environmental journalist returns with a multifaceted examination of the science, the art, the technology and even the smell of rain throughout history.Barnett, who has written previously about hydrology (Blue Revolution: Unmaking America's Water Crisis, 2011, etc.), has an eclectic agenda for her new work. She takes us back to the Big Bang and then moves rapidly forward, explaining in crisp, evocative sentences why Earth is our solar system's only habitable planet. She then discusses rainfall issues around the globe before commencing her focus on individual facets of the subject. Barnett writes about historical cycles of drought and flood and how they affected the world's principal religions-from Noah to Indian rain dances. She segues into weather forecasting, with an emphasis on the meticulous records that Thomas Jefferson kept (she returns to him at various other times). She pauses to tell us about the developments of the raincoat and the umbrella and provides a couple chapters on rain in American history-with details in one chapter about the westward migration, including the difficulties in Nebraska and elsewhere on the Great Plains. A particularly engaging chapter deals with "rainmakers," from charlatans to scientists. The author then tries to show the influence of rain on various arts, from Chopin to Dickens to Dickinson to Woody Allen. (This topic needs an entire book of its own.) Next comes the scent of rain, the perfume industry in India, and the problems of rainwater in urban areas, with a focus on Seattle and Los Angeles. Barnett also deals with the oddities of rain (frogs falling from the sky), and she ends with some sharp comments for climate change deniers-and with a visit to the rainiest place on earth, a town in India. Highlights the severity of some of our environmental problems with knowledge, humor, urgency and hope.

Starred review from April 1, 2015
In the dramatic overture to this spectacularly vivid, all-encompassing history of rain, environmental and science writer Barnett (Blue Revolution, 2011) describes young, still burning-hot Earth deluged with torrential downpours that lasted thousands of years and made life possible. Barnett then explains how the building blocks of rain: sun and ocean, wind and terrain conspire to create drizzle, thunderstorms, monsoons, and every other form of rain humankind has welcomed, cursed, and prayed for. Drawing on archaeological discoveries, myths, sacred texts, and literature, Barnett asserts that as rain goes, so goes civilization. She chronicles catastrophic droughts that doomed sophisticated societies in the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, and beyond, and offers a galvanizing account of the connection between Europe's unremitting rain during the Middle Ages and the surge in witchcraft executions. On home ground, Barnett keenly portrays settlers, farmers, and rainmakers caught up in the nightmares of the Dust Bowl and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. She dispenses strong medicine in her incisive discussions of acid rain, polluted storm-water runoff, water shortages in major cities, and the current and dire rise in extreme storms and droughts, then sweetens the brew with lively histories of meteorology, the raincoat, and strange rains of fish and frogs. Like John McPhee, Jared Diamond, and Elizabeth Kolbert, Barnett illuminates a crucial subject with knowledge, energy, conviction, and a passion for mind-expanding facts and true stories.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

November 15, 2014

From veteran science journalist Barnett (Blue Revolution), here's the story of something absolutely crucial, since it's the source of all the world's water. From the downpours that filled the oceans four billion years ago to the megastorms whipped up by today's climate change, from the shape of the raindrop to the way Seattle's misty climate inspired Kurt Cobain, Barnett shows us that rain is one thing that ties divided humanity together.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2015

The weather plays into our lives in countless ways. If we say it's raining cats and dogs (United States), shoemakers' apprentices (Denmark), old women and walking sticks (Wales), or husbands (Spain), rain conjures up some of the strangest and most vivid descriptions. Covering these idiomatic expressions, the economic significance of rain in India and around the world, the influence of rain on writers and artists, and more, Barnett (Blue Revolution) explores every facet of the substance. A seamless blending of personal narrative with scientific and cultural explanations makes the book both informative and entertaining. Fans of Mary Roach will recognize a similar ease of style and interjection of wit into what could easily become a boring topic. Barnett succeeds in producing a text that is accessible to every reader, from the environmental scientist to the parent choosing whether their child needs to wear a raincoat that day and everyone in between. VERDICT Recommended for anyone who has ever experienced drought, flood, drizzle, or gully washer. Readers of all ages and experiences will find something to appreciate here.--John Kromer, Miami Univ. of Ohio Lib., Oxford, OH

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.